Molly Moon, Micky Minus and the Mind Machine (Molly Moon, 4)

Molly Moon is on a mission – to bring her long-lost twin brother, Micky, home. But before she can rescue him she has to find him, and he could be anywhere! Luckily Molly’s time-travel talents and world-stopping skills help her in her search . . . until a baby-faced villain with a precocious plan to have the world’s biggest brain gets in her way. Can Molly, Petula the dog and their best friend, Rocky, use Molly’s new secret weapon – mind reading – to defeat the brainy babe and her monstrous mind machine?

Georgia Byng grew up outside Winchester, in England, near the river Itchen, with three naughty brothers and a sister. Her dad was nature loving and her mum was very encouraging and warm. The nearby country lane with its many cottages was somewhere Georgia first found out about characters, for it was teeming with them, and she used to interview them. Otherwise she would try to sell these neighbours things she had made.

As a child she loved acting and so at 18 went to The Central School of Speech and Drama in London. After college she began to paint and write. She had always written poems and songs but now she started writing stories.

Her first were in comic strip, a medium that she worked with for five years. The Sock Monsters was her first published book in 1995 - a comic strip story for 5 - 7 year olds.

Georgia lives in a house in London full of old and new art, as her husband is the conceptual artist Marc Quinn. Marc keeps all sorts of strange things in the fridge - once he had to keep a Canadian frog in there as it was hibernating and had to be kept cold. They and their family, Tiger, Lucas and Sky love to travel, their favorite destination being India.